Bill Belichick, North Carolina Are Bowl-Game Bound and Three More Overreactions to College Football Week Zero

College football is back, baby! Week Zero has come and gone, and we’ve had some time to digest what we just saw on the first of many Saturdays to come. We’ve praised the winners—how about those Tar Heels—and thumb-tacked the biggest losers.

It's time to tap into that most familiar of college football headspaces. Let’s overreact to Week Zero.

Some of these hot takes may age like the finest wines, others like milk left outside on a warm, sunny day. But that’s the fun of this exercise, and of college football as a whole. You just never know.

So, without furor, I mean, uh, further ado, let’s overreact.

Bill Belichick, North Carolina are bowl-game bound

What a difference a year makes. A season ago, Belichick and the Tar Heels got off to a dream start, driving 83 yards in seven plays to score a touchdown on the opening drive, sending 50,500 fans into a frenzy in the process. Then, the Tar Heels and their fans woke up from the dream into fell headfirst into a nightmare, as they were pulverized by TCU 48–14.

On Saturday in Ireland, in a rain-soaked slog of an affair, the Tar Heels again kicked off the scoring against TCU, and then showed us something. They were resilient and disciplined, possessed an at-times ferocious pass rush, and even had competent quarterback play from Billy Edwards Jr. in the Bobby Petrino-led offense.

This is still a young team, but maybe a bowl game-bound team? It’s not in Belichick’s nature to overlook any team, but a Sept. 12 date against East Tennessee State sure looks like a W. Then the schedule kicks into high gear, with dates against Clemson, No. 4 Notre Dame, and later on in the fall, clashes with No. 7 Miami and No. 24 Louisville.

If the Tar Heels were to lose all four of those games to the ACC’s heavyweights and Notre Dame, they’d need to win four of their six remaining games against Pittsburgh, Duke, Syracuse, UConn, Virginia and NC State to punch a ticket to a bowl game. Doable? Possibly.

Belichick’s Tar Heels are definitively better than they were last year. We don’t yet know how much better.

Virginia can win the ACC

Beau Pribula, Virginia Cavaliers — Beau Pribula and the Virginia running game looked awfully impressive in Saturday's win over NC State. | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

What happens when one of the most experienced teams in the ACC, particularly on the defensive end, lands a transfer QB with 10 games of starting experience from the SEC on the heels of an 11-win season?

And what happens when said team (Virginia) takes on an opponent (NC State) that hasn’t been immune to egg-laying under its coach in recent seasons? Exactly what happened Saturday.

The Cavaliers, playing the role of hot knife to the Wolfpack’s butter, rode a balanced rushing attack led by QB Beau Pribula to 258 rushing yards, played suffocating defense and dominated the time of possession en route to a 34–8 victory over NC State.

That wasn’t the winning formula for the Cavaliers last year, but it’s a surefire way to stay competitive against anyone. And with the one of the ACC’s easiest schedules, Virginia may not have to worry about “staying competitive,” with just one team currently ranked in the Top 25 on its schedule.

To be clear, there are ways this could go wrong. Can Pribula, no stranger to injury, stay healthy if he’s going to carry the ball 10-plus times a game? Can the Cavaliers’ many transfers continue to gel together? And even after that dominant Week Zero win, Miami is still the overwhelming favorite to win the ACC.

At the very least, Virginia has our attention.

USC has the same old (bad) defense

Trojans fans, if there were any watching (sorry, I had to), likely found themselves recreating this meme while seeing how things played out with the Gary Patterson-led defense against San José State.

A first-half shutout, in which USC held the Spartans to just 106 total yards of offense and denied them on a fourth down inside the 10-yard line, elicited a smile.

A fourth quarter in which the Trojans yielded 23 points elicited a shocked face—and plenty of bad memories for the much-maligned Trojans unit.

The context here is everything. With a 32-point lead after three quarters, coach Lincoln Riley and Patterson decided to bring in the backups on defense, while San José State kept their starters in the game.

While being out-scored 23–7 in the final frame might be a bit of a concerning indictment of USC’s depth, it certainly (largely) explains what went wrong defensively in the second half.

To be clear, starters or no, USC simply shouldn’t ever surrender 23 points in a quarter to the Spartans, a three-win Mountain West team in 2025. So while the scars of the 2022 Cotton Bowl and 2025 Alamo Bowl defensive collapses are still raw, USC fans can take solace in the fact that Patterson’s unit, when the starters were in the game, resembled a shutdown unit, even if it was against San José State.

This was just a glimpse, but later dates against No. 2 Oregon, No. 17 Washington, No. 1 Ohio State and No. 6 Indiana will provide the full scope.

North Dakota State could be the next James Madison

North Dakota State Bison — What an FBS debut for Tim Polasek's North Dakota State football program. | USA TODAY Sports via Reuters Connect

Just five years after former top FCS rival JMU accepted an invitation to join the FBS, lower-level power North Dakota State has made the leap to the upper echelon of college football after a reign of dominance that saw the Bison, who joined the FCS in 2004, claim 10 of 14 national titles from 2011 to ’24.

So, you weren’t the only one with the Dukes on your mind as you watched North Dakota State, in its FBS debut, thump Jacksonville State 33–7 despite committing a whopping 13 penalties for 94 yards. For it was JMU that steamrolled Middle Tennessee State 44–7 in its own FBS debut in 2022.

The Dukes didn’t take long to reach FBS relevance, winning eight games in year one, winning a bowl game in year three and reaching the College Football Playoff in year four. Could the Bison repeat JMU’s FBS excellence from the jump?

They have the ingredients. The Bison are experienced and loaded in the trenches, have a three-headed monster at running back and play a physical style that translates well to Mountain West play. October games against UNLV and New Mexico loom, but the conference’s third-easiest schedule figures to provide the runway for a potential James Madison-esque first season in the FBS.

There are questions about QB Nathan Hayes’s ceiling, particularly with an inexperienced group of pass-catchers. And those penalties need to be cleaned up.

So, we’re not ready to call them Dukes 2.0 yet, but the Bison certainly are off to a thundering start.

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